Tuesday, April 15, 2014

Sliding the Hyper-Slippery Slope

From the March 2011 E-Block.***In doing my research for the next Building Blocks book, one of my subjects is the nature of hell. I picked up the book Four Views on Hell looking for anything new or useful. I didn’t find anything new, but “useful” worked out a little better.

The proponent of the view most like my own is William Crockett,
and he made several points similar to my own about the contrary images
of fire and darkness. He did not relate the metaphors to honor and shame
as I did, but would probably find that agreeable.

What interests me more, though, is the response of John Walvoord,
who took the point for a literalist reading of hell. Essentially,
Walvoord refused to engage Crockett’s arguments about the nature of
ancient language (which were much the same as mine) and also did not
address the problem of contrary images. Instead, Walvoord opted for what
amounted to what could be called a “slippery slope” warning – which is
not a real argument, but an implied threat of undesirable results.

How do I mean? Consider his arguments as summed up:

The Metaphorical View Raises Questions about the Accuracy and Inerrancy of Scripture.

It does? How so? Walvoord’s implication here is that a metaphor
is an “inaccuracy” whereas a literal reference is an “accuracy”. But
that is simply false. What is questioned here is not the accuracy or
inerrancy of Scripture, but the accuracy of someone’s interpretation
of it. Walvoord’s premise, then, that the metaphorical view means that
Scripture does not describe hell “accurately” is also misplaced. Who
regards a metaphorical description as wrong because it is literally inaccurate?

From here, Walvoord issues what amount to candy-coated threats
that this sort of reading will “shut up” the Scriptures, but the reality
is that it will open them up – not shut them.

The Metaphorical View Requires a Nonliteral Interpretation of Prophecy.

Actually, that is a false step; no such “requirement” follows – even
though I happen to agree against Walvoord that much end times prophecy
IS making use of metaphor. However, in the end of this section, Walvoord
turns to ad hominem and claims that people who argue for a metaphorical
hellfire just do so because they find a literal hell repulsive. This
again is refusing to engage the arguments.

The Metaphorical View Lacks Proper Exegesis that Includes All the Pertinent Facts Relating to this Doctrine.

What that mouthful means is, Walvoord is not sure how this can be
handled by the problem of sin being an “infinite offense” against God,
which is something that I noted was no longer a problem at all:

Under the honor and shame paradigm, sin is particularly an
honor offense against God, in effect an insult to His honor and place by
means of disregard of His authority and rules.

The paradigm demands that such insults to honor be repaid
with shame. In this instance it remains that the value of the response
must be equitable -- hence Jesus, in his divine identity, remains the
only adequate payment for this honor offense; his blood alone is
adequate to take away sin. However, because it is a matter of quality
and not quantity, and is an "either-or" rather than a mathematical-value
proposition, it is no longer necessary to argue that a sin is an
"infinite offense" or to even deal in terms of quantity.

Indeed, the matter of quality rests on that while all of
God's honor is ascribed (due Him by nature), no ascribed honor of our
own can match His (being born into a good family), and we are otherwise
only capable of having what they call "acquired" honor.

I expect Walvoord was not informed of what relevance honor and
shame may have had to this issue; other than that, anything else? No,
not really: Other than a few statements to the effect he finds it
unbelievable that passages that say “fire” don’t mean literal fire
(though I assume he found it credible that passages that refer to
metaphorical “water” don’t refer to literal water).

With that, we can now engage briefly the reason why I turned this
into an E-Block article as opposed to a simple review for one of my
blogs. The main point here is Walvoord’s appeal to a “slippery slope”
which he apparently felt would cause us to cascade down the whirlpool of
misinterpretation. In a sense he was correct, though: Once the door of
possibility opens, it does open more. But that begs the question of
whether the slope is one we ought to be going down in the first place.
Walvoord looks into the maelstrom and sees darkness and death; we see
paradise and Pellucidar. I see Walvoord warning us that we should not
understand the Bible as people in its day would understand it – though
he would not have seen it that way, but rather as taking us away from a
proper hermeneutic – that happened to match with modern perceptions as
opposed to ancient ones.

In the end, the “slippery slope” warning is little more than an
attempt to coerce by way of threat that something held dear will be
lost. And it is true that some Christians hang on to the modern
hermeneutic, kicking and screaming, lest they lose other parts of it as
well. On the other hand, much thankful feedback has come my way from
persons who saw the dropping of the hyper-literalist hermeneutic as a
burden from which they were gladly relieved. And I daresay those
reflections were from persons I’d regard as more mature on their faith.
This is an ideological battle, however, and we cannot afford to
lose it. A church body that will not move off immaturity will not be
equipped to equip, much less convert, an entire world.